


Make Our Own Light

by LightRain_09



Category: Star Wars: Thrawn - Timothy Zahn
Genre: Character Study, Csilla, Gen, Introspection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-12
Updated: 2017-10-12
Packaged: 2019-01-16 13:38:27
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,009
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12343761
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LightRain_09/pseuds/LightRain_09
Summary: Eli Vanto, upon his first arrival to Csilla, considers the role he is meant to play. One-shot. Eli-centric for Vantober.





	Make Our Own Light

**Author's Note:**

  * For [moomkin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/moomkin/gifts), [Mishael](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mishael/gifts).



> My first posted fic in over a year. So even though it may not be perfect, this is a huge victory for me.
> 
> I'm going to go ahead and dedicate this one to Lady Mishael and Moomkin who, through their own tireless writings, motivated me to push past my block of the past several years and get something out there. Thanks for being awesome, you two.
> 
> Disclaimer: I do not own Thrawn, Eli Vanto, or anything in the Star Wars universe. Rights belong to their respective owners. Also, I had no beta-reader, so all mistakes are my own.

Eli Vanto stared out the small viewport window. He wasn’t sure whether he should be amazed or terrified.

It wasn’t that they didn’t have winters on Lysatra. He _had_ seen snow before. A little bit of it, anyway.  

Once. 

He had been nine, and his grandmother had practically dragged him out of his bed just as the sun was rising, chattering at him about something rare outside. He had been so bleary with sleep that her words had been little more than a faint buzz against his ears. Until she had opened the front door. A cold blast of air, colder than he had ever felt it, had swooped in around him. His eyes had shot open and everything had been white. White on the ground. White on the old dented land speeder she had owned since his mother had been a child. White on the roof of the greenhouse where his grandmother tended to plants not native to Lysatra, as if she had been determined to bring little pieces of a galaxy she had never gotten to see to live on her own doorstep.

The wonder had lasted all of about fifteen seconds. And then he had attempted to walk out into it. He’d gotten about three steps before he had realized that whatever the white stuff was, it was _freezing_. And no, he did not like that at all. His grandmother had nearly fallen over laughing when he had fled back into the house.

Eli’s mouth quirked at the memory. Most of his best memories were of the times he had spent out on his grandmother’s farm, far away from people and the galaxy and civilization. It had been the only place for his parents to leave him, when work had taken them away for too long or they hadn’t wanted a child underfoot while they were conducting business. He had never really minded much. He had learned a lot from his grandmother. A lot of it was silly and frivolous, the strange byproducts of her own strange interests. But some of it had been unexpectedly useful.

Like how to milk and crush certain plants to draw out their medicinal properties. Or how to splint and care for a broken limb when modern medicine wasn’t available.

Or how to be alone.

And he certainly felt alone now, staring out the viewport as their small shuttle drifted closer to a planet that, if he hadn’t known better, he would have declared uninhabitable.

Csilla.

He hadn’t been certain he would ever see the place. Thrawn had told him of the arguments he had made in favor of it, but in the end the decision hadn’t been up to him, or even to Admiral Ar’alani. It was the Aristocra that decided whether outsiders were permitted to set foot on Csilla, or even whether they were allowed to know where it was. It was the reason Eli hadn’t been off a ship for nearly six months now.

And now there it was, another hour or so away, a massive expanse of snow and ice and very little else as far as he could see.

A little knot of anxiety tightened in Eli’s stomach, and he had to press a hand against it to remind himself to keep his breathing even. A dozen different lines of thought danced on the edges of his mind, none of them pleasant, so he kept his attention focused stubbornly on the snow.

_That’s a hell of a lot of white._

Eli glanced over his shoulder at the shuttle’s only other passenger, trying to gauge whether or not his companion was too caught up in whatever he was studying to answer a question. It wasn’t that the Chiss would ignore him on purpose. It was just that... well, he was easily immersed.

“Lieutenant Fuoror?”

Fuoror gave a small jerk, red eyes widening slightly as he was pulled from whatever line of thought he had been following. He recovered quickly and settled again, fingers swiping in strange patterns across his datapad.

“Yes, Commander?” He asked without looking up.

Eli glanced back out the shuttle’s window with a small frown. They were close enough now that he could make out an angry mass of swirling dark gray and black clouds out near the planet’s horizon line. A storm. Far away from where they would be landing, thankfully, but still. Thrawn had warned him about those before he had left. He had cautioned him not to be caught out in one, as even the Chiss avoided them.

Because running straight into  _that_ would have been Eli’s first instinct.

“Is the cold weather conditioning you’ve been taking me through going to be enough?” he asked.

He was grateful his tone was casual, and more grateful that even amongst the Chiss, Thrawn seemed to be an outlier. No one he had met yet seemed to have his knack for reading people, which meant that unless he had chosen to share them, Eli’s emotions and thoughts had remained mostly his own here. At least, he assumed they had. At any rate, he hadn’t heard his own thoughts tumbling out of someone else’s mouth as if they had found a way to cut into his head and peek into his mind while he hadn’t been paying attention.

Eli frowned. Thinking about Thrawn always filled him with a strange mixture of irritation and longing, so he pushed the thoughts away and turned to look at Fuoror again when the Chiss remained silent.

“Well?”

Fuoror let out a small sigh and looked up from his datapad, eyes fixing on a spot just to the side of Eli’s face as he tilted his head in thought.

“ _Christor_ Mitth’raw’nuruodo was very specific on the details of your preferred climate,” Fuoror said.

Eli smiled wryly. “Of course he was.”

Was there anything Thrawn _hadn’t_ thought of?

Fuoror went on. “Supplied with that information, we were able to custom tailor your acclimation process. You should be prepared. And in the event that you do go into shock upon landing, a medical team has been instructed to be on call.”

Eli grimaced at him. There it was again. That little trace of... not quite hopefulness, but something awfully close to it, in his voice. As if Eli going into shock wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing. He knew it didn’t come from malice, at least not from Fuoror. The Chiss had been fascinated with Eli’s physiology ever since they had been introduced, taking his curiosity to uncomfortable levels on more than one occasion. He suspected Fuoror would have seen contracting hypothermia as a grand gesture on Eli’s part.

“How reassuring,” he muttered.

Fuoror tilted his head again, his lips quirking towards a pleased little smile. “Was it? I thought it might be but I was not certain.”

“You should head Csilla’s welcoming committee,” Eli said.

“Our... come again?”

Eli pressed his lips together to suppress a smile and waved him down. “Never mind.”

Fuoror stared at him for a moment, brow furrowed slightly in obvious confusion. Then he shook himself and his expression smoothed out. With a small shrug he looked back down to his datapad, fingers swiping again.

Eli glanced at it. It was angled away from him, but even if it hadn’t been he wouldn’t have had much chance of reading it. Chenuh was hard enough to speak. Reading it was something he doubted he would ever get the hang of.

“What are you looking at?” Eli asked. Because Csilla was growing larger in the viewport window, and his body seemed to be keenly aware of that as his insides tried to twist around one another. He needed a distraction.

“A transmission from  _Christor_ Mitth’raw’nuruodo,” Fuoror answered absently.

“He sent another report?” Eli asked, starting to reach for the bag by his feet that held his own datapad. He hadn’t noticed any new messages when he had checked this morning, but maybe Thrawn had sent it more recently.

Fuoror shook his head. “Not a report. An account. I requested that he send me details about your background.”

Eli hesitated. “My... background?”

“Yes,” Fuoror said simply. “Your history, how you grew up, things of that nature.”

“Fuoror,” Eli said slowly. “You know you could have just asked  _me_ all that, right?”

Fuoror paused. He looked up at Eli with a slightly bemused expression, as if he genuinely hadn’t thought of that. Which, to be perfectly honest, probably wasn’t nearly as far from the truth as it should have been.

Fuoror opened his mouth as if to say something, then merely shrugged again and brought his datapad back up.

Eli stared at him. “Why are you so interested in my background outside the Imperial navy, anyway? Thrawn sent me here to help you with military matters.”

“That is accurate,” Fuoror said. “But today you will meet the Aristocra, and they will be analyzing _you_ , Commander Vanto, not your military record.”

“Oh.”

He hadn’t thought of that.

In fact, he had been trying very,  _very_ hard not to think of that.

And just like that, everything he had been holding at bay for the past seventy-two hours snapped into sharp, brutal focus. He was on a Chiss shuttle headed for the Chiss home world to meet with the most powerful members of Chiss society. A society that, according to Thrawn, made Imperial politics look like child’s play.

Rubbing at his chest, Eli shifted in his seat and turned his gaze back to the viewport, trying to ignore the way his chest wanted to constrict around his lungs. They were close enough to Csilla now that he could see the variances in what had at first seemed a uniform blanket of white. A few dark smudges stood out starkly against the whites and grays, their edges too uneven to be manufactured. The datapad Thrawn had given him had said something about natural hot springs, though thanks to the temperature, many of them were unusable. But what caught his attention were the wide swaths of blue in shades Eli had never seen outside of a holo image. Vivid and clear, even from this distance, and somehow _cold_ , as if the concept had found an embodiment in color down below.

Glaciers. So much larger than he had ever imagined they could be. Nothing but solid masses of ice that stretched for miles and towered several thousand feet into the air in some places. Like mountains of ice. As if the entire planet was frozen solid from the inside out.

What did that say about the people who were able to live on it?

He stole another glance at the datapad Fuoror was pouring over and pulled on his collar to loosen it. He could only imagine what he was reading on there: Eli Vanto is an inconsequential human from an inconsequential planet out in what equates to the middle of nowhere in space. His childhood provided him with no truly useful skills, unless you would like him to prepare you a meal in a solar powered oven made from tarps and plastic.

_Oh hell._

The last shreds of Eli’s brave front finally evaporated, and he found himself exposed to everything that had been trying to press in on him since he had left.

It was gone. All of it. His family. His home. The few friends he had managed to make. Thrawn. Where did he fit into all of that? Friend, certainly, but that was too simplistic. Did it matter? He was gone, too. Stars, even his language was gone. Most of the Chiss were fluent in Sy Bisti, but none of them spoke Basic or had any reason to learn it. And his name. When was the last time he had heard someone speak his name? It was gone, buried underneath the honorific of his rank in a navy that he no longer served in. Would he ever be just Eli Vanto again?

 _Why?_ A cruel but familiar voice whispered in his head. _Since when was_ just _Eli Vanto a person worth being?_

Eli slammed his eyes shut and choked back on a curse. Damn it, he thought he had been past this. No. No, that was a lie. He thought he had been strong enough to ignore the fact that he _wasn’t_ past this, strong enough to convince everyone around him that he was everything Thrawn had promised he would be. It had worked for a while. Fuoror and Ar’alani had bought it. But the Aristocra? They were going to see right through him. They were going to take one look at him and see that same stupid little nobody from Wild Space that everyone had always seen. Because that was all he had ever been. Underneath the ranks and a military record bolstered only by his association with Thrawn, he was still just Eli Vanto.

“Commander Vanto?” Fuoror’s voice, laced with real concern, was like a lash cracking through the air, and it took all of Eli’s willpower not to flinch.

“Are you well?” Fuoror asked, leaning halfway out of his seat to peer at him. “You look... distressed.”

“I’m fine,” Eli said, though he couldn’t disguise the way his voice had gone ragged. He tried for a smile, felt it fail, and shook his head instead. “Just feeling a little claustrophobic.”

Fuoror cocked his head.

“Closed in,” Eli corrected.

“We should be landing in another half an hour,” Fuoror said uncertainly. “Perhaps fresh air will help?”

Eli nodded. He knew damn well that landing on that planet was not going to help at all, but he couldn’t tell Fuoror that. Couldn’t tell him that Thrawn had been wrong, that Eli himself was a fraud, that in a few hours this whole half-cocked plan was going to fail spectacularly because he was not what they thought he was. What Thrawn thought he was.

 _Stars, what was I thinking coming_ _here?_

Fuoror cast a thoughtful look at his datapad. “Perhaps a distraction would work better. Would you like me to read _Christor_ Mitth’raw’nuruodo’s account to you?”

Eli almost choked at that. Hearing Thrawn dissect his entire childhood was the absolute last thing he needed right now. “No.”

“Not in its entirety,” Fuoror said, as if he thought Eli's only objection would be to the length. He moved over to sit beside him and tilted his datapad towards him as though Eli might want to read along. As if he could. “But this passage at the end might interest you."

“Fuoror,” Eli almost whined. “I _don’t_ want...”

But Fuoror ignored him and began to read aloud in thickly accented Sy Bisti:

_“In summation, there is only one thing you must understand about Eli Vanto. He is, by his very nature, good. Those things which others must nurture and cultivate within themselves through years of practice and self-restraint come without thought to him: compassion and kindness are foremost amongst them._

_A good warrior knows his own strengths, but a better warrior understands his own shortcomings. I have sent Eli Vanto to you not to serve as my replacement, but to be that which I was never capable of being. I am certain that, given the opportunity, he will be a leader in possession of both a keen mind and a good heart. Taken separately those two traits are not, perhaps, overly impressive. But together, they form an extraordinarily rare and potent combination._

_Give Eli Vanto your trust and your support, just as I have given him mine, for no one could be more worthy of them._

_In closing, if I might make a personal request I would ask that you stand by him through the trials ahead. He weathered many storms at my side even when I was not deserving of his loyalty, and it pains me that I cannot be there to repay that kindness.”_

It took several seconds for Eli to realize that Fuoror had reached the end.

He sat there, mind blank, and stared at the datapad, willing the unfamiliar characters to morph into something he could understand. Something that would make sense. Because surely he had misheard. Surely Thrawn hadn’t written that.

 _He doesn’t want me to be his replacement_ , he thought numbly. _He just wants me to be... me?_

Eli didn’t realize he’d spoken aloud until Fuoror made a slightly amused sound in the back of his throat. “I should think so, Commander. Who else would you be?”

Who else would you be?

Eli slumped down in his seat as everything seemed to drain out of him all at once. Then he started to laugh.

For most of his life, he had bought into the idea that he was somehow lesser than everyone else around him. Oh, not on the surface of course, but growing up feeling inferior because of where you came from took its toll much faster than anyone was willing to admit. It was the reason he had applied to Myomar without even thinking about trying for Royal Imperial. It was the reason he had chosen a supply officer track. Whatever would have kept him out of the way of anyone or anything important, that was the path he always took. He told himself it was because he was naturally suited to it, considering his talent with numbers and his family’s business. He even told himself it was because he was a quiet, simple person who wanted to lead a quiet, simple life. But deep down, all Eli had ever truly wanted to be was invisible.

And it had worked. Until a Chiss had decided to step straight out of his grandmother’s bedtime stories and directly into Eli’s life. From that moment everything Eli had spent most of his young life cultivating- his carefully thought out plans, his meticulously crafted anonymity, his ability to pass like a wraith through people’s lives, unfelt and unnoticed- had all been blasted apart. He had no longer been Eli Vanto, cadet of Myomar, future Imperial supply officer. For a brief, terrifying second, he had been nothing. Just Eli Vanto. And that had scared him more than any legends or myths ever could.

But he hadn’t had to suffer it for long. Thrawn himself, whether he had meant to or not, had swiftly returned everything he had taken from him. All that had been required was a little course correction, and then he had become Eli Vanto, translator and aide for the Empire’s only alien, ensign, lieutenant commander, commander. Ever since he had first stepped foot inside Myomar, he had had something to hide behind. And he had been fairly certain that no one had ever been able to see past all the camouflage. No one had ever glimpsed _just_ Eli Vanto, because why in the galaxy would anyone ever bother to look? That was what he had believed.

Apparently, he had been wrong. 

“Commander, are you all right?” Fuoror asked, sounding alarmed, and Eli realized he was still laughing.

Eli shook his head as he struggled to get himself back under control and gave an honest answer. “I have no idea.”

That didn’t seem to placate Fuoror at all. The Chiss scowled and sent a slightly agitated look at his datapad, as if he thought laughing fits were something Thrawn should have explained to him and hadn't. 

Eli glanced back out the viewport window. They would be entering the planet’s atmosphere soon and then it would all begin, whether he was ready for it or not.

 _Ama would have liked it here_ , he thought with a small smile. She had been ecstatic that day it had snowed on Lysatra. She had believed that it would make things stronger. What had her words been? _It’s only when it’s cold and dark that we learn to make our own light, Eli_.

Make our own light.

“Fuoror, could you do something for me?” He asked, turning back to face the Chiss.

Fuoror bowed his head, red eyes sweeping across Eli’s face, real concern still etched on his features. “If it is in my power to do so, Commander.”

Eli smiled. “Stop calling me ‘commander’.”

Fuoror’s eyes widened. “But...”

“Just Eli is fine. Or Eli Vanto, if you’d prefer.”

Fuoror shifted in his seat and looked away. “I cannot... Commander, the level of familiarity that would imply is...”

“It’s not about familiarity,” Eli said, then added, “Though, I would like to consider you a friend.”

“Friend or not, it would not be proper."

Eli raised an eyebrow. “Is it proper to call me by a rank I no longer hold?”

Fuoror hesitated at that, glancing at him questioningly. Eli shrugged. “I left the Imperial navy the moment I agreed to come here. And I’m not formally a member of your military or your chain of command. So I’m not a commander. I’m just Eli Vanto.”

Fuoror’s face actually turned a slightly lighter shade of blue as he considered that. He worked his mouth but no words came out. Eli smiled to himself. So Thrawn wasn’t the only one who appreciated logical appeals. But Eli had one more to make.

“Please, Fuoror,” he said. “This is something I need. At least for a while.”

Fuoror grimaced. He still looked as though he might be trying to come up with a good reason to continue with the formalities. But at last, he breathed out a small sigh and gave a tight nod.

“Very well, Eli’Vanto,” he said, pronouncing his name so quickly that it almost ran together. "If that is your wish."

"It is. Thank you."

The pilot leaned over the side of her seat and called something back to them in Chenuh that Eli didn't understand. That was one thing that was going to change. He was going to spend more time studying and learning the language. The sooner he closed that particular cultural gap, the better. Maybe Fuoror would be willing to tutor him.

Fuoror shot Eli a look that was almost shy before moving back into his original seat and pulling the straps of his harness over his shoulders. “She says that we are entering the atmosphere and recommends that we secure ourselves, Com... er, Eli'Vanto.”

Eli nodded and reached for his own harness. He clicked it in place over his chest and settled back to watch their final approach out the viewport window.

Csilla.

There would be no hiding down there. No barriers between him and the rest of the universe. That still terrified him beyond belief, and yet...

He slipped his hand beneath several layers of parka, jacket, and two shirts to grasp hold of the carving that hung around his neck. It had been with the personal pack of supplies Thrawn had given him before he had left. There had been no explanation for it, only a short note instructing him to wear it but keep it concealed until the time came to let it be seen. _You’ll know_ , the note had read.

Eli smiled and dropped the carving to let it rest against his chest.

 _I was wrong before_ , he thought. He was not alone here.

He knew what it was to be alone. To be alone was to conceal yourself so well behind a mask that you lost track of yourself beneath it. To be alone was to enter people’s lives and leave them again without ever leaving behind an impression. To be alone was to never be seen, never be known.

And by that standard, Eli had not been alone for a very long time.

The shuttle entered the upper atmosphere of Csilla, giving the trademark shudder of a planet’s gravitational pull taking over for the weightlessness of space. Eli tilted his head back and closed his eyes.

Thrawn had seen him for years. Now he had to learn how to see himself.

No more hiding. Down there, he wouldn’t be a military commander or a Wild Space nobody, or even aide to the Empire’s most brilliant mind. He would be just Eli Vanto. And for the first time in his life, he believed that could be enough.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks so much for reading!
> 
> Credit for Thrawn's title of "Christor" goes to whoever came up with it (I searched but couldn't find them). I read it once, liked it, and decided to use it. If the original creator of that has an issue with its inclusion, let me know and I'll pull it. (Hell, for all I know, it's in the original trilogy somewhere, but the first place I noticed it was in someone's fic on tumblr). 
> 
> Credit also to Moomkin for her headcanon that the Chiss would likely pronounce Eli's full name as if it were one long name. That was adorable in that one snippet on tumblr and I loved it.
> 
> And of course credit to the Thrawn fandom on tumblr for Fuoror. I can't for the life of me remember who started it, but here he is. Edit: Fuoror is cystemic's creation.
> 
> And finally, I did very little research for this. This fic was about me clawing my way out of this paralysis I've been stuck in for years, so if there are some nuances that aren't quite right, please forgive them. I'm not overly versed in the finer details of the Star Wars universe, and any inferences regarding Chiss culture were entirely my own spur-of-the-moment developments.


End file.
